Economic Burden is Higher for Patients with Type 2 Diabetes and Comorbidities

Patients with type 2 diabetes can experience comorbidities that lead to hospitalizations and impact the economic disease burden.

Researchers sought to estimate incremental all-cause healthcare resource utilization and costs among patients with type 2 diabetes experiencing cardiovascular-, heart failure-, or renal-related hospitalizations and compare them with patients with diabetes without these complications. The results of the study were presented at the AMCP Annual Meeting during a poster session titled “Healthcare Resource Utilization and Costs Among Patients with Cardiovascular, Heart Failure, or Renal-Related Hospitalizations and Type 2 Diabetes.”

This retrospective study used the Humana claims database to identify patients 18 to 90 years with cardiovascular, heart failure, or renal hospitalizations from October 1, 2009, to September 30, 2015. Eligible patients had 12 months of continuous enrollment prior to the date of first hospitalization and were followed for up to 12 months. A diagnosis of type 2 diabetes was required during the pre-index period.

They identified a total of 221,229 patients with cardiovascular events, 68,126 with heart failure events, and 120,105 patients with renal events. These patients had significantly higher mean ages and Deyo Charlson comorbidity scores compared with the cohort without these comorbidities.

After adjusting for baseline covariates, the researchers found that patients in the comorbidities cohort (cardiovascular, heart failure, and renal cohort) had significantly higher mean inpatient stays (0.10 vs 0.01; 0.17 vs 0.03; 0.14 vs 0.02), outpatient visits (1.44 vs 0.82; 1.73 vs 1.00; 1.61 vs 0.93), and emergency room visits (0.17 vs 0.02; 0.25 vs 0.04; 0.21 vs 0.03) per-patient, per-month (PPPM) compared with the patients without comorbidities.

Adjusted mean PPPM costs were significantly higher in the cardiovascular ($2,686), heart failure ($4,111), and renal cohorts ($3,703) compared with those without cardiovascular ($510), heart failure ($930), or renal ($774) comorbidities.

“The findings might be helpful for providers in developing approaches to advance value-based healthcare in this population,” the researchers concluded.

The study was sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim and Humana.

Annavarapu S, Ghosh S, Li Y, Moretz C, Shetty S, Prewitt T. Healthcare Resource Utilization and Costs Among Patients with Cardiovascular, Heart Failure, or Renal-Related Hospitalizations and Type 2 Diabetes. Abstract E14. Presented at the AMCP Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy Annual Meeting, April 23-26; Boston, MA.